True North
by dustbunny
Summary: (updated chapter 3) An ordinary mission causes Sydney to reevaluate the constants in her life.
1. Compass Points

True North: Compass Points _  
  
Disclaimer: These characters are the property of J.J. Abrams, who is most likely cringing as I type.  
  
A/N: Part one of more than one. If the title bears a striking similarity to Fisher's "True North", it's because I, um, appropriated it for my own uses. This story is a big honkin' AU, written mostly because finals are over and because I missed my fix last week. I'm going to blame my semester grades on ABC.  
  
***  
  
"We intercepted a message from K-Directorate agents yesterday detailing an intended heist tomorrow evening in Massachusetts. The Veris compass was developed by Anderson Technologies, and J.M. Anderson is holding a celebratory party tomorrow night at his estate in Boston. Sydney and Dixon will go. Any questions?" Sloane looked levelly around the table.  
  
"What are they going to do with a compass?" asked Sydney absently, looking at the debriefing screen.  
  
"Not just any compass," Sloane chided. "Marshall?"  
  
Marshall's head snapped up and he got to his feet awkwardly. "As we all know, you can seriously screw a compass up by putting a magnet about it. From what I've heard, you can't mess up this compass. The mechanism is supposed to be the most accurate in the world, which is such a major scientific breakthrough and hey, what a far cry from getting the directions from the stars, right? I mean, not that we can see the stars these days anyway, but. Um." He withered slightly under Sloane's steely gaze. "Anyway. It always goes back to true north, no matter the magnet, situation, altitude, environment...okay. So. Yeah."  
  
"Bombs," said Jack Bristow, cutting through the extended silence. "Torpedoes, nuclear warheads---the mechanism on this compass could be manipulated as a surefire targeting assist. If it can keep a hold on true north, it could be an extremely valuable guard against coordinate errors."  
  
Sloane nodded, eyes gleaming. "With the state the world is in, we can't afford to let K-Directorate get their hands on this."  
  
A murmur of agreement went up in the room, a surge of patriotism running through the agents like electricity. Sydney met her father's eyes across the table and held them.  
  
***  
  
She waited impatiently at the red light, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and letting her mind wander to the "Joey's Pizza" call she'd known was coming. Barring Danny, this was the steadiest relationship she'd ever had.  
  
The thought was sudden and unwanted, and something like absolutely moronic, because even mentioning him in the same mental breath as Danny meant that he was occupying a slightly more-than-platonic berth in her mind. Obviously, this was a bad thing, leading to national security breaches and heartbreak and lack of efficiency and heartbreak, and another dead body in a bathtub, and okay, that was a big old bunch of heartbreak just waiting to happen. She had a brief panic attack until the sweet-looking grandmother behind her gunned her engine threateningly.  
  
Right. Green meant go.  
  
She wasn't sure when she'd gotten so paranoid about relationships, but she had a feeling it had something to do with bathtubs. More importantly, she wasn't sure when she had started seeing her handler as a potential love interest. It wasn't any kind of hero-worship or overblown admiration, because in all honesty she could probably take him in a one-on-one. He was nice-looking but not aggressively so, and he was as caring and concerned as all her friends were, but the one quality that stood him apart from everyone else was the fact that he understood. Nothing helped the bonding process like finding out your mom killed his dad.  
  
Which was a relief, more or less, because it meant that this strange attraction was based purely on the fact that he was pretty much the only eligible man in her life who understood the pressure of her job. It was also insanely depressing, seeing as he was the only eligible man in her life who knew about her job at all.  
  
The phone rang, and she maneuvered expertly into a parking space as she picked up with her free hand. "Hello?"  
  
"---no, I wanted that in the other pile---what do you mean the copy's not there?" There was rustling in the background and a muffled obscenity. "Oh---hey, Syd. This is Will, but, um, you probably already guessed that. Because---yeah, well, anyway. This is Will."  
  
She resisted the urge to laugh and settled for a wide grin instead. "I figured."  
  
She could just picture him, nodding enthusiastically and pacing around his office. "Right, right. Anyway. I wanted to know if you were free tonight, because I bought some really nice wine and the entire Star Wars trilogy." There was a pause. "Oh my God, I can't believe I said that. I just hit the bottom. I can get no lamer."  
  
"Oh, Will," she said, because she always hated doing this. "I can't. I'm sorry. I have an emergency meeting at work tonight, and I really can't get away because it's---"  
  
"Super-important," he finished for her. "No, it's no problem, really. It was short notice anyway. Listen, the offer still stands. If you want to drop by after your meeting, you might be able to catch my incredible lightsaber moves."  
  
"Which is enough to keep me far, far away," she laughed. "No, I'm kidding. I'll keep it in mind."  
  
"That's good enough for me," he said softly. "I'll talk to you later."  
  
"Bye." She sat in the darkness for a few seconds after she clicked her phone off, and something was hurting in the vicinity of her heart. It would have been nice to be able to love Will. Francie was of the mind that the boy was madly in love with her, complete with irrational jealousy. This was a theory she had vehemently denied until that awful kiss---and the fact that there was actually a sober second kiss---that left her feeling embarrassed for him. But he was still there, and she didn't know if the fact that he was still trying was supremely stupid or incredibly touching.  
  
Remembered something about a cold night and warm arms, and decided that for what it was worth, he was a good friend.  
  
She got out of the car feeling like she had just delivered one of her roundhouse kicks to a puppy, and the sight of Vaughn with a welcoming smile perked her up less than it usually did. She nodded a perfunctory greeting and hoisted herself up on the table. "So what's the countermission?" she asked brusquely. "And I've seen the pictures of this thing. I seriously can't tell it apart from a boy scout compass."  
  
He looked a little taken aback at her abruptness, but carried on in the same vein gamely. "That's right. Nobody's ever seen the interior of the Veris compass, so we'll be performing a switch. Here," he produced a similar-looking compass, "is an exact replica of the compass from the outside. We'll have an agent hand it off on your way out." He saw her grimace and remembered a switch-off gone wrong, and shook his head reassuringly. "Nothing to blow up this time."  
  
Sydney shook her head. "The fact that you're going to have someone there at all. K-Directorate's probably going to send Anna, and if she or anyone else sees the switch it could be all over."  
  
"Sydney," he said, and his voice was quiet and toneless. "Don't worry about it. It's a greater risk for you to take both. Like you said, it's extremely difficult to tell it apart from any standard compass."  
  
She was about to argue but looked at him, and he was tired and thin-looking recently, and she snapped her mouth shut. "You're right. I'm sorry I was snippy," she said contritely, drawing her knees up to her chin. "I mean. You're a really great guy and all, and I'm incredibly lucky to have you as my handler, but I guess. I just get tired of having to make up excuses, even if it's only to keep him safe, you know?"  
  
He nodded sympathetically, looking nobly restrained but like he was hurting inside, and the thing with him was that it was all genuine. She saw the question in his eyes and remembered he didn't know about Will. "My journalist, um, friend," she amended lamely. "It's just that I can't tell him what's going on, and that's so confining. I feel horrible about it. It's like there's this huge damper over us, because if I say anything wrong it could mean so much more."  
  
She paused momentarily to wonder when she had degenerated into a Will-like babbler, but he was nodding again, his eyes focused on a spot behind her head. "I wasn't going to tell you this, but our psychiatrist wanted me off as your handler, especially because of the...the thing with your mother, and my dad."  
  
This made it seem like more of an illicit affair, and she wasn't sure it sounded any better. "She killed him, Vaughn," she pointed out, voice thick. "It's a pretty big deal."  
  
He offered her a half-smile. "Well, yes, but it's over and done with and we can't change the past. The thing is, she thinks I'm too emotionally attached to you to function well as your handler." This sounded like every argument she'd made in her mind on the way over, but she glanced at him and he didn't seem too worried about it and actually looked vaguely amused. Intellectual and collected. Mature, maybe.  
  
"Are you?" She asked lightly, her voice dropping in a way she didn't like.  
  
He looked at her, his face completely serious now, and when he spoke his voice sounded strangely unsteady. "Probably."  
  
***  
  
It was one-thirty when she let herself in with the key under his flowerpot, and the dark room was illumined by the dim glow of the television. Will was draped awkwardly over the couch, an ancient quilt more on the floor than on him, his glasses still on and his hair a messy golden halo around his head. There were a few stray pretzels and beer cans scattered on the floor, and the scene was so pathetic it was painful.  
  
Most likely she was the inadvertent cause of some of this. Will had probably been a lot more well-adjusted before he met her.  
  
He mumbled something in his sleep and shifted restlessly, and she froze, waiting until his breathing became deep and regular before turning off the television. He looked tense when he slept, forehead slightly furrowed and his mouth drawn, a sharp contrast to the little-boy smile he usually wore. She rescued his quilt and tucked it around him, inexplicably gratified when he relaxed some. She had never thought about Will worrying about something enough to carry it into sleep, before.  
  
She tried smoothing out the faint lines of his forehead, slightly shaken, and before she left she dropped a quick light kiss where her hand had been.  
  
***  
  
_02022002 (jen@velvet-star.com) 


	2. Magnetic Declination

True North: Magnetic Declination_  
  
Disclaimer: see previous. In short, not mine.  
  
A/N: Finals end, and anything remotely resembling creativity goes out the window with them. So I did some research, and as far as I know there is no compass in existence to measure true north, as opposed to magnetic north. So now, armed with my new extensive knowledge of, um, magnetic fields, I can now tell you that magnetic declination is the difference between true and magnetic north. Or something to that effect.  
  
***  
  
She never felt comfortable wearing heels. The perfect height in stocking feet, she was positively gargantuan in two-inch heels and towered over her date at the senior prom. She didn't have a problem with it, but apparently he did---something about wounded male pride. He was a nice guy, though. She danced barefoot. And when school started the following Monday and she'd seen her friends limping around campus, she swore off heels for the time being.  
  
The straps of the red stilettos bit into the back of her ankles, and she winced, pasting on a smile when another ridiculously rich former geek glanced her way. She'd reconciled herself to doing missions in high-heeled utilitarian boots and had gotten to the point where they were comfortable to run in than sneakers, but these death traps were an atrocity to footwear everywhere. She made a mental note to mention it to Sloane when they got back.  
  
"Good food," said Dixon into her earpiece from his place at the buffet table. "Can't say as much for the conversation, though. I don't speak computer."  
  
She laughed softly as she scoped out the rest of the room. She was used to these functions by now, the glittering people and the rich and polished entrepreneur, old or slimy or both. J.M. Anderson was standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by socialites and business moguls alike, tall and thin and dressed in a ratty MIT sweatshirt and ancient jeans. He had a glass of champagne in one hand, a busty blonde on the other. She thought he looked bored out of his mind and not as happy as a millionaire should be; when he caught her eye she hazarded a raised eyebrow and a quirk of the lips, and he smiled a small secret smile.  
  
And then she remembered that she was going to be robbing him in less than ten minutes, and turned away with a trace of regret. "Anna's here," Dixon's voice hummed in her ear, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the K-Directorate agent, sultry and low-key. She caught Sydney's eye and blew her a kiss.  
  
"Bitch," she muttered.  
  
Dixon passed her, chewing on something intently. "They're serving beef jerky," he said in amazement, under his breath. "Ten minutes, starting now."  
  
She turned, casually, toward the staircase leading toward the lower level and then the laboratory. There were no guards; the appearance of low security belied an intensely high-tech alarm system for the lab that had taken Marshall close to three days to decipher, and even then for a mere ten minutes.  
  
She walked through the labyrinth-like corridors hurriedly, absently noting how oak-paneled walls made a gradual transition to a sterile white material as she wound gradually lower. The door, while pass-protected, was nothing she hadn't encountered, and she pushed it open to find a small, cluttered room, wires and parts of machines scattered everywhere. Moonlight streamed in through a small window over the desk, and the compass itself was lying carelessly on a pile of looseleaf, serving as a paperweight.  
  
It was almost too easy.  
  
"Five minutes," said Dixon, voice calm.  
  
She moved quickly, picking it up and slipping it into her handbag, and was almost out the door when the window shattered and an alarm blared over the sound of breaking glass. Anna Espinosa crawled through the window and checked for the compass, and barked a short curse when she discovered it was gone, dropping something on the desk and retreating as quickly as she came. Sydney started running, startled out of her frozen state, the panic of the alarm drowning out any thoughts of finding out what the other agent had left.  
  
She was hoping that she'd be able to slip out of the house unnoticed in the panic, but she heard another set of footsteps in addition to the click of her heels in the suddenly silent corridors, and risked a look over her shoulder.  
  
"Hey. Hey!" called J.M. Anderson, and she increased her pace, silently thankful for all the laps she'd put in at the track. If she remembered correctly there were two more turns before she was back on the main level, and she had a head start and the element of surprise. She didn't particularly want to knock him out, but if it came to that---  
  
And there was a man lying in the middle of the hallway, out cold with blood trickling down his face and dripping in a little puddle by his head. There was a certain resemblance to the agent she was supposed to be meeting, and she bent down hurriedly, aware that she was risking---everything, and relaxed slightly when she noticed his nose was broken and not, say, his neck. Anna wasn't usually this sloppy, but perhaps this had been an exception. And suddenly, she knew with a feeling of dread that she wouldn't find the fake compass on the prostrate agent, remembering a glint of silver and a strangely satisfied smile on Anna's face.  
  
The pounding footsteps were getting louder, now, and she straightened up quickly, whispering a silent apology to the man on the ground. Started running again, and the second before she rounded the final corner she felt something give, and had time to register the sharp pain in her ankle before she hit the ground.  
  
She was definitely going to talk to Sloane about the footwear. If she ever got back and didn't end up dead in a river somewhere, the way things were going.  
  
J.M. Anderson's face loomed close to hers as he knelt down, and she felt the cold chill of gunmetal against her neck. "Are you okay?" he asked in concern, and she fought an insane urge to dissolve into giggles.  
  
"Oh, Mr. Anderson," she started, and paused, trying to keep her breathing even and her voice steady. "I got---"  
  
He had dirty blonde hair, and a thin sardonic face, and up close he looked barely twenty-five, a baby really. He helped her to a sitting position, the gun still cool and insistent in its pressure. "Jimmy, and don't bother," he said, calmly taking her handbag and extracting the compass, slipping it into his pocket. He leaned toward her, and she could feel his breath tickling her ear. He might have been holding back laughter. "Better you than her, but. Maybe next time." He stood up, offered her a hand. In a particularly chivalric move, he strapped his gun back to his boot.  
  
She took it and pulled herself up, biting her lip as her ankle protested, and let him put an arm around her waist and lead her limping around the final corner and back to the party. "Everything's fine, nothing's missing," he said casually to an inquiring glance. "We've taken care of the intruder." He laughed. "These damn shoes of her are more dangerous than anything out there."  
  
Sydney nodded, trying to look ingenuous. "Jimmy," she whispered without moving her lips. "I have to go." She could have gotten the compass from his pocket, maybe, but it would go straight into the hands of SD-6. Not worth the risk.  
  
"Can anyone take her to the hospital?" said J.M. Anderson without missing a beat, and delivered her safely to Dixon, who'd volunteered. None of them missed Anna Espinosa detaching herself from the crowd and leaving, fuming visibly.  
  
"It's. I'm. Sorry," said Sydney in the heavy silence as they got into the van.  
  
Even through the dark, she could see Dixon's strained smile, touching in its effort. "Next time, then," he said.  
  
***  
  
"You don't have to do all of this, y'know," she said, sitting in Will's living room, her foot propped up on a pile of cushions, a bowl of chicken soup cooling on the coffee table. "It's not like I'm sick." All she'd done was twist her ankle, and the swelling was coming down already.  
  
The smell of the soup wafted toward her invitingly, and she took a cautious sip and started coughing. She didn't want to know how he could ruin canned soup. The boy meant well, but he was probably the worst mother hen. Ever.  
  
"See," said Will, coming around the corner. "You're coughing. Don't tell me you're not sick. I swear, they overwork you. Don't they have any other workers in that bank?"  
  
Sydney, trying to get the taste out of her mouth, nodded. "Could I have some water?"  
  
"Sure," he said, disappearing into the kitchen, and she briefly debated the pros and cons of dumping the entire bowl into his potted plant. She didn't want to kill the plant, but she didn't see that she had much choice. She'd just emptied the last drop when he came back.  
  
"I mean," he continued. "I don't want to get all. Intrusive, and overprotective and stuff, but. Injury on the job, which is like, the last straw. And you're working in a bank. It's not like you're, I dunno. James Bond or a track star or anything." He grinned, to show he was kidding, but his eyes were worried.  
  
She laughed, weakly. "Right. James Bond."  
  
"Yeah, well," he said. "Hey, we can finally get to the Star Wars trilogy. Or play Scrabble or something. Yoda gets a little annoying when you're sick."  
  
"Scrabble," she said quickly, knowing something about boys and an obsession with memorizing the entire dialogue of all three movies. Which might be endearing when you were drunk, but generally a pain in the ass otherwise  
  
"Sure," he said, standing up. "Just let me go get it. It's upstairs." She listened to his footsteps for a while, and got up and limped around the room absently. Will was a notorious packrat, famous for trailing little bits and pieces of paper after him wherever he went, and his house was like the main nest. Yesterday's newspaper was on his desk, under a sheaf of papers and a folder with---  
  
"Oh my God," she whispered. It was a plain-looking thing, manila and a little scruffy around the edges, and it had two familiar numbers and a letter block-printed in his writing darkly over the label. She stood stock-still as he pounded down the stairs, breathless and triumphant, wielding the Scrabble box.  
  
"Found it. In the bathroom. Don't know how it got there, but---hey, what's wrong?"  
  
She'd never been so scared before, so sure that the next time she saw him would be at his funeral, or before that in a bathtub somewhere, face bloodied and body limp and---"I asked you," she choked out accusingly, her heart pounding in her ears. "And you said you'd stop."  
  
His normally ruddy face paled as he saw the folder. "What---what do you. Stop what?"  
  
"Danny's dead, Will! It's over, and it's done, and I just want to forget about it. Why can't you just let it go?" She heard her voice getting high and strained, and saw him start in surprise. "It's. I can't believe you'd."  
  
"Syd," he said, and his voice was very far away. "Calm down. How did you---how did you know that---"  
  
"I have to go," she said abruptly, pushing past him, ignoring the pain in her ankle as she ran until she got to her car and slammed the door shut, her breathing loud and uneven in ragged gasps.  
  
She'd just seen his death warrant.  
  
***  
  
_02102002 (jen@velvet-star.com) 


	3. Polar Coordinates

True North: Polar Coordinates_  
  
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah, I'm not J.J. Abrams, end of story.  
  
A/N: So after an extended period of inverse productivity brought on by the brainwashing qualities of Olympic figure skating (and I mean that in the best way possible) I caught the new episode last night and blam, everything else went out the window. This resulted, as well as some other ideas floating around, which according to my chem teacher is something like decomposition.  
  
***  
  
Four days after the retrieval fiasco and the day after the Will fiasco, Sydney was sitting on a dock with Vaughn, drinking coffee he had procured and probably breaking every rule there was. She watched the steam waft from the top of the cup and disappear into the biting air, knowing his eyes were on her and basking in it. He was infallibly polite, waiting patiently for her to tell him exactly what warranted this---but that could wait for a few seconds. The part of her that wondered at these things wanted to know exactly when she'd sunk to such a juvenile level.  
  
It might have been when she saw him for the first time since the last precious few seconds of the countermission debriefing, and he smiled at her with starkly beautiful restraint and handed her the cup with an impersonal concern.  
  
But there they were, watching the sailboats unfurl their white wings, seagulls crying overhead and the ocean crashing underneath, and she couldn't help but think that this was one of the better minutes she'd had in a long while. The tangy sea wind blew a little of his cologne to her, and she'd almost relaxed when he turned to her.  
  
"So you wanted to ask me something." He sounded cautious, and she felt a stinging, unreasonable disappointment that he would have been the first to break the silence.  
  
"Yes," she said, setting her cup down with more care than necessary. "I told you about my journalist friend? Will?"  
  
Something in his eyes darkened, and he nodded perfunctorily.  
  
She barely had time to exult in this small victory. "He…was investigating Danny's death. And even though I asked him to stop, it looks like he's getting somewhere, because yesterday afternoon I saw a folder marked 'SD-6' on his desk."  
  
He inhaled, sharply. "And you."  
  
"Freaked out, mostly. I think I yelled something about Danny and laid a complete guilt trip on him. And then I limped out." She tried to laugh; it sounded raw and harsh in her own ears. "Didn't give away any secrets this time, no matter how much I wanted to. He's making his way into the bathtub on his own."  
  
She hadn't known quite how angry she was at Will until she saw her voice reflected in those damnable eyes. "So you two aren't talking."  
  
"He called twelve times before I disconnected the phone." She shook her head. "And the thing is, it's my fault. Again. It's just. I asked him to stop investigating the case, because God knows what SD-6 would do to him if he found out, and he's. Not."  
  
She could see him turning this over in his mind. He was intellectual like that; he made balanced, well-informed decisions. He was one of those rare people who was perfectly suited to their job, and the only times he'd ever bucked tradition and had gone purely on instinct were when he thought she needed rescuing.  
  
This, she realized, was why she had to stop acting like she was in junior high and get it together. He was trying admirably to keep this in a professional capacity, and waving hockey tickets in front of his face wasn't helping much.  
  
"Listen," he said. "What is he to you?"  
  
Not altogether the question she'd been expecting; it took her a while to gather her thoughts because she hadn't let herself think about this recently. "Will," she said slowly. "I. He's probably in love with me." She saw him open his mouth, and she shook her head, cutting him off. "Yeah, to me. He's always been there, and he'll always be there, and I love him for it, I do. It's just never worked out, but. But if timing, and things, and---we could have been good together, Vaughn."  
  
She caught a fleeting glimpse of something on his face, and it looked familiar and painful.  
  
"He doesn't know about what you do," he said, after a brief pause. "The stakes are smaller when this isn't brought into it."  
  
"Whose side are you on, anyway?" she asked, only half-joking.  
  
He shrugged his shoulders, his face strained. "I'd tell you not to throw something that could be good away just for the investigation, but I've done the same thing for less than that."  
  
"Are you happy about what you did?"  
  
He was staring at the ocean, and she could see enough of his profile to make out a self-deprecating, rueful smile, small and private. "Sometimes," he said.  
  
She had half an idea of what that meant and shook her head abruptly, because it was what she wanted it to mean and infinitely dangerous for both of them. All the circumventing they'd been doing had been showing up on her grades; when her professor asked her with some delight how she'd come up with a particular theory her mind would always revert to Vaughn and half- drawn conversations.  
  
He sighed, and she turned to look at him again. "You know, you should talk to him," he said with effort. "Try to work through this, Syd. Because--- because it'd be the best thing for everyone."  
  
Their eyes met and there were a few crazy, suffocating seconds of eye contact, because Vaughn believed in honesty, and self-sacrifice, and although he tried to pretend he was as cynical as her father he was something of an idealist at heart. Not like Will, who wanted freedom for all and truth at all costs, but on a somewhat smaller scale. That everything would work out at the end if he just kept hoping, and that he could stand to lose a little bit if things would be better for someone else.  
  
She could almost hate him for it.  
  
Later, in her car and her hands still shaking, she realized he hadn't answered the right question. Thinking back some more, she realized she'd never asked it.  
  
***  
  
When she got home Will was sitting on her front porch, chewing pensively on what looked like beef jerky and playing with his keys. He looked like he hadn't slept much, and when she got out of the car he stood up and swallowed.  
  
"Hey," he said softly. "I need to talk to you."  
  
"I do too," she said, inexplicably glad that he was there. "I'm sorry I blew up at you yesterday. I guess it was just the shock and everything of seeing that---"  
  
"Sydney," he said, and it was one of the few times he'd called her by her full name. He looked drained, the pallid cast of his face bringing out the blue of his eyes. "How did you know about SD-6?"  
  
---and there was the blood-stained bathtub again, and she was realizing that this was Danny, and he wasn't breathing---  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said shakily, and by the look in his eyes she knew that she was a half a second too late.  
  
"The folder you saw," he continued, watching her reaction, "had absolutely nothing even remotely relating to Danny Hecht. In fact, if you'd looked inside, all you would have seen was the autopsy report of a woman and a transcript of an interview with a man in prison. The only thing I think you saw was the title of the folder, and you suddenly made the connection to Danny. How?"  
  
"Will," she said helplessly, unlocking the door with fumbling fingers. "Get inside."  
  
He did, and stood by the staircase as she leaned against the door to support herself, and how was it that she could conduct life-or-death missions with so much calm and break under this? He was still looking at her, still waiting for her answer, and all she could do was berate herself for the telltale mistake.  
  
"Will, listen to me," she said, and his eyes were still on her, glacial and unmoving. "I can't---I can't tell you."  
  
And he broke that awful silence that was nothing she'd known of him before and was the boy she knew again, half-mad with anxiety and angrier than she'd ever seen him but familiar for all of that. "So you know. Sydney, a man's been in jail for eight years because of SD-6. Eight! His wife is dead, and his daughter's grown up without him and they're both afraid she'll be killed any day now---like that woman who was murdered in the park- --like Danny, Sydney."  
  
"Yes," she whispered.  
  
"And you know about it. You know why Danny was killed, then, and you're going to let it go. And you know what else? I could swear on my life that more people will die because of SD-6." He stopped. "Why? What is this?"  
  
…and his life was the last thing she wanted him to swear by.  
  
"Will," she said again, and was almost gratified to know what she was going to say. "I can't tell you. And you need to stop this, right now. Walk away from it, and don't ever come back to it again."  
  
He laughed bitterly. "And you expect me to go on with---with this," he said, motioning expansively, "Knowing that SD-6, whatever it is, will always be between us as the one thing we'll never talk about? It's the proverbial elephant in the damn living room. I'm not going to lie to you--- the last three years have been the best of my life. But you know me, Sydney, I can't let this go. And you wouldn't know me if I did."  
  
"Dammit, Will, do you want to die like Danny? Like that man's wife? Because you can, and you will, and I'm not going to help you do it. Just. Stop." If she didn't know better she would have said she sounded near- hysterical, grasping at straws now, and he was shaking his head.  
  
"I can't." Two words, toneless, with the determination of a desperate man.  
  
Her head hurt with a mixture of frustration and fear. "Then I can't talk to you again," she said, and for a moment she hoped with everything she had that he would do something that wouldn't make him Will, forget his ideals and convictions for once. And she knew with as much certainty that neither of them could forgive him if he did.  
  
He exhaled, a long silent breath, and looked at her for an endless second, and she thought she saw something like anguish in his eyes. "Goodbye, Syd," he said, opening the door and stepping outside. "I guess I'll see you at my funeral."  
  
"Goodbye," she echoed as the door shut behind him, spent and hopeless. If she could cry, she thought blankly, sliding to the floor, her heart might not have hurt so much.  
  
***  
  
_02252002 (jen@velvet-star.com) 


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